Climate change – a foreign policy challenge

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century and also a key foreign policy task. While the climate has undergone many shifts over the course of the earth’s history, it has changed so rapidly since the Industrial Revolution that the human influence on the planet’s natural radiative balance – known as the greenhouse effect – can no longer be denied. By emitting greenhouse gases, especially CO2, into the atmosphere, human beings have played a part in warming the earth’s surface.

Germany has confirmed its adherence to the Paris climate agreement. The German government believes that the international treaty will come into effect before the next climate conference in November.
...

The Energiewende is Germany’s path to a secure, environmentally friendly and economically successful future. It represents the decision to fully overhaul Germany‘s energy supply, moving away from nucl...

Germany wants to increase the percentage of its electricity supply that comes from solar, wind and other renewable energy sources to between 40 and 45 percent by 2025 and then to between 55 and 60 percent by 2035. By the same token, this should enable CO2 emissions to be reduced by 40 percent by 2020.